Top Hackers, we need you for Operations Research - mck- https://kuomarc.wordpress.com/2012/07/02/top-hackers-we-need-you-for-operations-research/ <comment><AUTHOR> OR/CS is not the ultimate combination. If you want to do interesting work in this space you ideally need a background in all of optimization (ILP, convex NLP, stochastic optimization),control theory, certain areas of economics (general equilibrium, game theory, mechanism design, concepts behind applied finance), statistics/econometrics (out of sample performance, hypothesis testing, causality, dealing with non random samples) and probability (mainly stochastic processes).

OR itself contains a large number of applications that combine many of the above, e.g. network revenue management, but someone who has taken grad courses from the OR department alone would genuinely struggle to do anything significantly new or interesting.

People from computer science departments have also been gradually moving into these areas, witness growth in machine learning, algorithmic game theory etc.

<comment> mck- I actually agree with you there. Since OR is so multi-disciplinary, it is paramount to have a broad knowledge of all the fields it touches. Although I specialised in OR in my masters, my bachelors was actually CS&Economics/Business, which has been of great value to me.

In terms of CS moving into machine learning and artificial intelligence, the focus tends to be on applications in the consumer sphere - e.g. analysing big data to understand and recommend to consumers ala Amazon/Netflix, or image recognition to self-driving cars.

But these are mere sub-domains of OR. In business, what I think has the highest value and remains yet unexploited is the optimization branch/sub-topic of OR. The likes of production optimization, supply chain optmization, inventory optimization, facility location optimization, and my favorite, vehicle routing optimization.

<comment><AUTHOR> Just for fun - "stochastic optimization" as in here: www2.isye.gatech.edu/~ashapiro/download.php?Down=book

is in fact identical to "empirical risk minimization" in Vapnik's statistical learning theory. As soon as you are not 100% sure about any of the numbers in your routing model, you find yourself in the same setting as that studied in "machine learning"!

<comment><USER2> Thanks for the link.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I would argue that the cross pollination is happening already. In my Convex Optimization grad course, three fourth of us were CS/EE majors (the majority being C.S.). The material is not that hard to pick up if you have a background in Linear Algebra and Probability which if you are doing research in Machine Learning, you have already picked up.

Depending on the specifics of the problem, I would assert that it is possible for a more traditional OR trained person (who is rapidly disappearing IMO) to beat the CS person. Software Engineering tells you to modularize your code, use meaningful variable names etc. Typically Matlab codes written for OR problems try to replicate the same variable names used in deriving out the analytic equations (e.g. v, \lambda, \eta etc). Also, there is a strong emphasis on trying to make the code as compact as possible at the cost of modularity as a way of ensuring that mistakes are minimized. I have learned from painful experience (17 hours of debugging :) that the latter way of thinking is not wrong just different and even makes sense in specific domain related problems.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think now it is fairly generally appreciated that interior point methods constitute perhaps the most powerful class of tractable algorithms there is, yet remarkably they are hardly ever mentioned in any of the undergrad CS algorithms classes. Usually there is a passing mention of linear programming to establish an auxiliary result like max flow / min cut duality but that's it.

<comment><USER3> Yeah but an undergrad class in algorithms is supposed to in most cases just give you a deeper view of traditional C.S algorithms. There are quite a few topics which are barely skimmed ( approximation algorithms, randomized algorithms). I believe that is OK because as long as most of the students are trained to think algorithmically, that should be fine. After all, most advanced stuff becomes much easier once you have the basics fundamentals clear.

<comment><AUTHOR> All true, but the idea that a good fraction of combinatorial algorithms that undergrads see can be replaced (albeit less efficiently) by linear programming is important. Not clear how classical CS curriculum helps to appreciate this either. And after all, LP used to be considered an almost elementary topic before it mysteriously dropped out the curriculum (perhaps something to do with linear algebra no longer being compulsory).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> An ORite won't really make a difference if the approach is already chosen (e.g. "write a tabu search for the VRP"). She does make a difference when the problem is new, when looking for problem features (e.g. symmetry, decomposability, extreme points of the set of solutions), when deciding what approach to use (size matters).

Given an unsolved OR problem, a top 10% ORite will likely beat a top 1% hacker (or even CS person) in solving that problem.

<comment> mck- Very good point. That's why cross-polination would be explosive. The ORite can identify the approach, where the hacker can implement it.

<comment><USER5> I kind of agree here but for real life working hard problems you need an OR that can code to make performance tweaks and adjust the algorithm in code. Maybe with some help from a programmer('hacker') as a mentor or code reviewer. You could almost take any standard problem and learn to apply a simple standard OR approach and code it but when the shit hit the fan you must have someone to ask what makes the OR thing work/not work. A normal programmer isn't interested in this more low level thing of the OR side.

EDIT: Stop asking for top X if you really are trying to inspire more OR into more software. Most stuff in this world are done by mere mortals and not 1% of hackers. The true hackers of the world can probably already grok both malloc and TSP with timewindow constraints.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Don't write off CS grad students who did most of their research in OR. My CS dissertation was in an area that would definitely be considered OR, and many CS students at our school learned Tabu search, Simulated Annealing, etc., often in the context of machine learning or local search algorithms.

I would have guessed that most OR research labs had a fair number of CS grad students.

<comment> mck- I'm not writing CS grads off, as a matter of fact, my post is all about CS grads with OR research being the true future movers & shakers of the field, didn't I?

 _I would have guessed that most OR research labs had a fair number of CS grad students._

Exactly. A fair number. It should be the majority.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> The problem I see is, that it is really difficult to understand the OR sphere from the outside. While one can identify the need for some regular software product (App, etc) by just watching and participating actively in the market, this seems almost impossible in OR.

<comment> mck- It is exactly this problem that I hope to address with this blog post, trying to induce more to cross the bridge between CS and OR. The point is that the OR sphere is really not that hard to understand (although ORites have done a pretty good job making it seem so).

OR as a field has always had the problem of ambiguity and definition. Some call it Management Science, some call it Industrial Engineering. But whatever it entails, it has always suffered from visibility, especially in the hacker sphere, since it's not consumer related.

I don't think it is impossible to educate/increase awareness of OR in the market. Surely, the market is still behind as it is currently being educated on the value of simple analytics and data science, but eventually, I think the opportunity looms large for OR. It just has that irrefutable added value. But again, we need hackers to truly bring forth that value.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Where do you get an OR job? What would be the top OR employer?

<comment><USER9> airlines, shipping companies, disney, ILOG

<comment><USER4> ILOG has been acquired by IBM.

<comment><USER9> ibm is also on the list.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Joining Wealthfront - <AUTHOR> http://andyjohns.org/joining-wealthfront/ <comment><AUTHOR> Andy has an excellent track record, so you should follow his work if you're interested in growth.

This is also a really important post from a recruiter perspective. The points he hits are really common reasons why someone would join a new company. You should seek to create a place that hits these points for recruits.</comment>


The Post-YC Slump - <AUTHOR> http://blog.samaltman.com/the-post-yc-slump <comment><USER3> > The main problem is that companies stop doing what they were doing during > YC—instead of relentlessly focusing on building a great product and growing, > they focus on everything else. They also work less hard and less > effectively—the peer pressure during YC is a powerful force.

I'm curious about why there's no consideration of the possibility that perhaps such a high-intensity pace is simply not sustainable on a personal level for most people.

<comment><USER4> If the pace isn't sustainable for a given person, that person probably shouldn't be trying to do a startup. This might seem a bit blunt, but I think it's probably true. There are many other options to bring the same financial and "impact" success that a startup provides and the expected value of these options is probably higher than creating a startup given an aversion to the high-intensity pace.

<comment><USER5> If 'startup' is defined by the pace, then you're correct. But do we all have the goal of making a successful startup, or of earning more money from your own idea? If the latter, there's an argument for a business model that allows a more humane pace. It may just not be compatible with many investors' models.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This seems like a failure of YC - if companies that have gone through the program are consistently forgetting the lessons it has taught as soon as they leave, maybe they're not being taught correctly?

That said, I'm not surprised. YC is a rare opportunity, and people will absolutely punish themselves for the duration of their stay in YC to get the most out of it. Few people can maintain that kind of pressure longer term. I don't think that's a weakness, I think it's just being human.

<comment><USER7> Of course it's a failure of YC. There is a 0% chance YC has all this stuff right. It would be depressing to them if they did: that would mean there were no further opportunities to improve the outcomes for YC companies.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I have to disagree with a lot of people who seem to be saying that "working hard" necessarily means torturous 100 hour weeks.

I don't think the measure of working hard is counting how many hours you're at the office. I think the signal of working hard is how often you let yourself get into your comfort zone and coast.

I think working hard means pushing yourself out of your comfort zone - continuously. It means forcing yourself to ask the hard questions about your business you're scared to ask. It means figuring out how to do things you're not good at, like hiring or selling. It means identifying the most important problem for your company today, and tackling it, even if it's not what you want to be doing.

I'd guess that during YC, the partners and the community act as a force to keep people asking the hard, honest questions about their business. And I'd guess that after YC, without those outside forces, people revert to their default comfort zones, with things that feel nice. Getting press feels nice. Going to conferences feels nice. But what's true early is true later too: it's the work that doesn't feel nice that usually matters most.

You could spend 40 hours a week in the office doing the right things, or 100 hours doing the wrong ones. One of those will lead to growth, the other one won't. And it doesn't have to do with the hours.

<comment><USER9> but you won't compete with someone spending 60-80 hours/week doing the right thing.

Which is why people talk about it the way they do. The doing it right is assumed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> "So how can startups avoid this slump? Work on real work."

Simply working hard does not guarantee any path to success, at least in the world of startups. You can work extremely hard, do no "fake work", and have really great product and the vast majority of startups will still fail. You need a great deal of luck as well, ie. #rightplacerighttime, and that's something that isn't admitted by VCs whatsoever.

</comment><comment><USER11> One common theme from the YC CEOs I've talked with (maybe 8-10 - small sample size, etc.) is that post-YC they don't know the basics of sales (what a purchase order is, etc.). It would not surprise me if this was part of the reason.

<comment><USER12> Could you expand on this? I'm curious.

<comment><USER13> Basically everything that's important to running a real business beyond coding. Accounting, finances, HR, etc are all real challenges.

<comment><USER14> I contest those are not "real challenges" in the way you are implying. Sure they might be on the mind of inexperienced founders because they are suddenly relevant and novel, but they are also quickly solved by bringing in experts or firms. These are superficial challenges and only become "real" if they are snowballing with more fundamental issues (lack of growth, money, market fit)

<comment><USER15> IMO, that's almost like saying "Building the app isn't a 'real challenge' because we can contract it out to IBM."

Yeah, you can hire "experts", but it's expensive. Having some basic knowledge of how things work can postpone hiring experts until the company can actually afford it. Want an expert HR person or an expert shipping/receiving guy? That's $150k each per year.

I mentioned this in a post just yesterday. The way YC (and VC in general) encourage companies to scale quickly at all costs increases dependence on VC money because it encourages companies to spend extra money getting things done/ready quickly, when they may not really need to.

HR, billing, marketing, sales, etc. are just as much a part of a company as the product, and "Hire experts to do it" may not be the best advice when starting out.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> What a contentless article, "Work harder! Grumble grumble grumble." We all know that none of these VC "gurus" are actually cleverer than the rest of us, but yet we give them an audience for empty posts like this because their job is (hilariously) to maintain the VC guru image.

I just don't get why these "insightful advice" posts ever gain traction.

</comment><comment><USER17> > At the end of a YC batch, the general consensus among the partners is that > about 25% of the companies are on a trajectory that could lead to a multi- > billion dollar company. Of course, only a handful of them do. Most go on to > be decent or bad.

Pure hubris.

> The main problem is that companies stop doing what they were doing during > YC—instead of relentlessly focusing on building a great product and growing, > they focus on everything else. They also work less hard and less > effectively—the peer pressure during YC is a powerful force.

No, the problem is that it's difficult to build a large company. High growth is easy in the beginning when you're going from 0 to $100,000, but try going from $100,000 to $100,000,000. "Fake work" isn't what prevents the vast majority of companies from doing this.

</comment><comment><USER18> I think there's also a theme around young founders, the ability to work as a team when the going gets tough, hubris, and the fame that comes with being in YC.

During YC, you're in a very controlled environment - everyone around you is working hard, you have a deadline, you don't have money, and you just focus on building, etc. Once you leave YC, suddenly, a few things happen (I've seen this with exactly 2 start-ups so apologies for extrapolating):

1\. You suddenly have a lot more money, and simultaneously lose the very guided structure you had at YC

2\. A lot of YC founders are young, haven't worked in teams with different personality types, etc before and they have to learn how to manage people and each other

3\. Because growth is the only thing they've been taught to look for at YC, at the first sign of any slowdown in growth (which could be natural and acceptable, or due to some other reason), they start freaking out and churning. This further exacerbates point 2 and they start stressing out their team and each other

4\. There's a bit of a personality cult around YC founders right now - <USER2> recently attended a YC party in an apartment in a fancy high-rise in SF and it's amazing how many hanger-ons that were there fawning over the founders. It was a very SF start-up version of a celebrity night-club in LA/NYC. This unfortunately builds on the narrative of infallible YC founders who are building great billion dollar companies, etc

I guess where I'm going with this is that in addition to just growth, folks need to be taught how to work in teams, how to gear up to build a longer term, sustainable company, and to appreciate that they can and will make mistakes, but they need to handle that with grace and maturity.

<comment><USER19> > and it's amazing how many hanger-ons that were there fawning over the > founders. It was a very SF start-up version of a celebrity night-club in > LA/NYC

Lol... I think your YMMV on what you encounter here, maybe I just know the boring founders that could care less about social status. In fact I think the ones who care about social status are by and large the ones who don't actually get accepted.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I think it's super interesting to hear that they're developing software to automate traction updates. It would be so cool to be able to "gem install yc" into your Rails app (or whatever) and then have hooks that will automatically keep them abreast of user growth and engagement.

It provides really interesting opportunities for them to be proactive about giving help at the right time. For instance, they'll be able to setup rules for notifications e.g. when you're having a slowing rate of growth, or to send congratulations when you've had a strong month etc.

I imagine one of the problems in investing in so many companies is that you aren't always aware of problems before it's too late. By using software to collect metrics about their portfolio companies, they can systematize how to become aware of and help out companies where they can make a difference.

<comment><USER21> What if it were a daily and weekly internal email that hooked into your existing analytics or database?

I'm working on an alpha for a product called Growth Report that does just that. It's not "gem install yc" but it's pretty close. Interested to try it out with FieldDay?

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> YC is a coaching environment. Imagine if you took a professional soccer team and removed the coaches for a month. They would start loosing and if they didn't you would find that one of the players had taken on the role of a coach. This is almost certainly what is happening here.

<comment><USER23> So maybe YC isn't long enough to turn players into coaches?

<comment><USER24> It might be long enough for some, but not the others. Startups need to have majority of things right even before getting into YC and then improve more under YC mentoring.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> "Raising money and getting press is fake work"

Raising money is not fake work if you don't know how you are going to pay your team in 6 months, or 3 months, or next month. Twice I have taken out a second mortgage on my house to pay my team, its not a good idea. Press seems to be a necessary evil, again I have made the best product on the market, only to go unnoticed because of lack of press coverage. Its not like 99.9% of the press are out looking for a great product, they are being lead by the PR agents.

I agree raising money and getting press are "non productive work" as far as product advance goes. But so are things like washing the dishes in your house, they don't help you get more work done that day, but it is a needed part of the system.

So maybe y-combinator should take those two VERY important survival aspects over for the 25% of companies that they feel are the unicorns. For another 10% they will make sure they have enough money for the next year, and that they will get the press they need. Seems like a natural extension....

<comment><USER26> Agree with the first part, less so the second. YC is (rightly) worried about signalling risk. If they exposed who they thought the 25% were, the other 75% would struggle to get funding.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> I'm surprised how many people here seemed to have missed the point of the article.

What the author is talking about is how there are a lot of fun things one can work on that could be useful at some point in the future. But probably not within the next week or month. Instead, the author is saying to focus on the things that will without a doubt be useful within the near future (<month).

</comment><comment><USER28> Couldn't this just be a form of the "Sports Illustrated cover jinx", that is, regression to the mean?

</comment><comment><USER29> Seems like it would be a simple inexpensive investment (probably completely outsourced) for YC to set up fortnightly (down from Tuesday dinners/weekly) dinners for founders of a single batch to come and report updates to each other.

I recall reading somewhere that YC batches are now split into clusters because there are so many companies in each batch. Maybe these dinners can be cluster specific as well.

As the companies grow in size, they can democratically decide to reduce frequency to monthly - I can see how changes would be slower as the companies become larger.

Edit: To clarify, this is purely a peer group - no YC presence needed. Have to do it this way to scale.

</comment><comment><USER12> I believe this could be a problem in general, but I keep thinking about a recent high profile failure from YC - Homejoy. They had a number of problems with their platform, but from what I've gathered through the press/blogs is that they focused too much on (geographical) growth after their $38mm round at the expense of fixing issues with quality and their business model (costing them retained users and continued local market growth). I think this is an outlier to Sam's theory, but it also provides some food for thought.

</comment><comment><USER30> This pre-investment spike for startups reminds me somewhat of the pump and dump marketing tactics of a more mature company looking for a sale or an IPO. I've been in companies that have done this: go overboard trying to game some unsustainable metric, such as top line traffic, until you don't have to anymore. If you have done digital marketing for awhile, you can come up with dozens of ways to "grow" your metrics that appear sustainable on the surface but have some kind of catch that makes it impractical long term.

</comment><comment><USER31> "At the end of a YC batch, the general consensus among the partners is that about 25% of the companies are on a trajectory that could lead to a multi- billion dollar company. Of course, only a handful of them do. Most go on to be decent or bad."

"You have to keep up a high level of intensity for many, many years."

Don't take this the wrong way /u/sama, but could it be that perhaps business models are the problem and not founders not grinding away for years on "real work"? 90% of startups fail [1] [2]. I am highly suspect of the idea that this is caused by teams not being committed or working on "fake work". More likely, markets shift, business models aren't viable, and so forth. This is not a case of people "not giving it their all".

[1] [http://www.quora.com/What-percentage-of-startups- fail?share=...](http://www.quora.com/What-percentage-of-startups-fail?share=1)

[2] [http://www.forbes.com/sites/neilpatel/2015/01/16/90-of- start...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/neilpatel/2015/01/16/90-of-startups- will-fail-heres-what-you-need-to-know-about-the-10/)

EDIT: Its been proven scientifically that people encounter diminising returns past 40-50 hour work weeks. [3] Don't encourage grinding harder. Encourage finding where to exert the most leverage, and hiring best people you can hire _today_. Quality people + automation leverage (your software) + quality marketing is a solid formula (but not a guarantee) for success. Luck, while no one wants to admit it, is a non-insignificant component of success ("right place at the right time").

[3] [http://www.lostgarden.com/2008/09/rules-of-productivity- pres...](http://www.lostgarden.com/2008/09/rules-of-productivity- presentation.html)

<comment><USER32> Sure--the vast majority of ideas just can't support a multi-billion dollar business.

But a lot can, and poor execution is why they don't.

<comment><USER33> Don't you feel the least bit of reservation selling young kids on the idea that they're likely to create a "multi-billion dollar business" by running through a grist-mill of a program that -- by your own admission -- isn't sustainable for most of them?

The vast majority will not achieve that goal (you don't need them to, either -- for sustainability, all you need is a few winners), and in the process, I can't help but feel that they're stunting their career, technical, and personal growth by approaching critical period of their lives with the belief that _your_ economic model of the universe applies equally to _them_.

<comment><USER32> No, I don't.

We try to be up front that they have a high chance of failure. But I truly believe that there is nothing better for their career, technical, and personal growth than doing a startup they're passionate about (we try to filter out the people that want to do a startup for a resume item).

Also, one of the advantage of YC is that if the startup doesn't work out, founders have made a lot of connections in the network and can usually find something interesting to do next.

As I've said before, I think the actual risky path is not pursuing what you really want to do and then spending the rest of your life regretting it.

<comment><USER33> My impression of YC's marketing is an appeal to hubris (and often, the hubris of youth). Most will fail, but none believe it will be them, and in the process, they position themselves outside of an environment in which they'd otherwise have access to people with technical and sustainable business experience from which they can learn what (and what not) to do.

I'm a lot happier having spent 10 years building a sustainable company doing what I really want to do, than I ever was at exciting startups during the v1 .com bubble.

Getting to that point, however, required putting in a lot more than 3 months -- or 3 years -- of backbreaking effort.

<comment><USER34> sama's response is correct. There's no real downside to doing YC when you're young. If you succeed, you get rich. If you don't, you can probably find work at another YC company that is succeeding. If you can't, then having YC on your resume will probably help you land a job at another startup. No YC founder will ever go hungry.

<comment><USER33> There's a long, long road between not "going hungry" and maximizing your individual potential, and anyone that survived the first .com bubble unscathed knows that the latter has far more lasting power.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> After the startup curve, the focus has to be about Revenue. And in a simple way, there's a formula, and activity outside of this formula is a lot of the 'fake work' Sam mentions.

Revenue = Value x Sales Activity x Conversion Rate x Retention

The specific approach will differ depending on your size, your vision, funding or bootstrapped etc, but the fundamentals are the same.

Value: Covers getting your business model right. Volume x Margin, Product- Market fit kind of thing. It's essentially a hypothesis you're taking into Sales activity and refining.

Sales Activity: Includes lead generation, but I don't like to put 'Marketing' as a separate heading because blogging and chatting to bloggers is the easiest way to feel busy and achieve nothing. Are you getting in front of clients?

Conversion Rate: And how many of your clients are actually buying? Track this! Segment it when you can! [ _channels the power of Danielle Morrill_ ] "Know your numbers!"

Retention: Obviously depends on the business model, but ongoing or repeat clients are lovely. In a recurring revenue business, churning a client for every new one you bring on board wastes all the previous steps.

</comment><comment><USER36> How about backing these assertions with real data? Can YC show that companies are more likely to flatlines post-YC vs. while being coached? Or is that simply due to fast growth being hard to sustain? A careful statistical analysis of the growth of their companies, given the large sample they have, could have made this an interesting post rather than just a smug one...

</comment><comment><USER37> We felt this coming out of 500 Startups B12. We were a team of four, we had limited analytics in place, we were ranking horribly for SEO, accounting was a mess, and we were doing a ton of things that didn't scale which we needed to now scale. Post demo day we had to worry about fundraising, then recruiting, hiring, and now training--and in some cases firing, and starting all over again. If we get this iteration wrong we're doomed to fail. Basically we needed to add a whole new level to our pyramid and we need to find people we can delegate tasks to do that the process scales and so everything has come to a grinding halt for a few months. If you raise more money quickly it may be possible to attract more & better talent at the top of the funnel and run this process more quickly but it's been a massive growing pain for us.

</comment><comment><USER38> > Burnout seems to almost always affect founders whose startups are not doing > well...

There doesn't seem to be an obvious causation here. I could totally see either causing the other, or there being a common cause of both. Seems weird to just assume burnout is a result of doing poorly.

</comment><comment><USER39> One can easily gain momentum by simply adding mass, which is completely the wrong metaphor. Let's end the practice of misusing the word "momentum" in business. Use "velocity" or simply "speed".

</comment><comment><USER40> My favorite fake work is "I am doing research." It is also the most important work one can do prior to making decisions, however it just gets to one point where you have to admit to having enough data to move forward.

</comment><comment><USER41> Not sure how I feel about cleaning up a code base as doing "fake work".

<comment><USER42> It does not lead to the growth of a company directly. Better to work on more features than to work on cleaning up the desk.

<comment><USER43> I agree and disagree with this point. The absolute worse thing a startup can do is to "flip"/"redo" their code base, in an attempt to clean it up. We learned that the hard way last year. That said, going through code and occasionally cleaning a class or two in order to achieve a desired feature can save time while debugging, usually a lot.

This is like most things in life, taken in moderation = good for you, but the extreme might kill you (or in this case, your startup).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> Bullshit fake work is way worse than strictly time-boxing work. A focused 20-40h/wk is a lot more effective than 100h/wk of working on 90% bullshit, particularly because the bullshit reduces your per-hour marginal productivity as much if not more than real work, so you're not even getting just 10h of real work. And because 90h of bullshit this week means, due to sunk cost fallacy, prior commitments, etc., you're basically going to have to spend at least 50h the next week on similar bullshit.

<comment><USER24> Yep. Time tracking software is quite good at proving this. When one becomes disciplined in tracking "focused work", it becomes obvious that these mythical 60-100 hour work weeks are nonsense.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> The article should have been titled "never lose momentum". Burnout is always a big thing. And distractions are even bigger. And complacency is fall of many.

</comment><comment><USER45> This post is probably the best reason I've seen yet to be a YC startup. The investor who can call you out on stuff like this is the investor you want.

<comment><USER3> I, too, can tell you to work harder.

I, too, won't pay your therapy bills after you burn out from working 16/7 work weeks for months/years on end.

<comment><USER46> This is emblematic of many cynically dismissive comments in this thread.

The article is about the difference between real work (that moves a startup forward) and fake work (that does not). People often work very hard at the wrong things, so Sam's advice has nothing to do with "work harder". "Work smarter" might have been closer, if we're going to pick a half of that cliché. To take a post that is clearly trying to help save founders from a lot of unnecessary work, and twist it into something sick, is pretty uncharitable.

I keep thinking about adding the Principle of Charity to the HN guidelines. What good comments would be ruled out if we did this? It would certainly rule out many bad ones.

[http://philosophy.lander.edu/oriental/charity.html](http://philosophy.lander.edu/oriental/charity.html)

<comment><USER3> Sorry, but I _am_ cynical about the article and its motivations.

A venture capitalist isn't generally going to be satisfied with one of their investments discovering they prefer running as a lifestyle business instead of a potential multi-billion dollar company.

The VC has an interest in the aggregate success of their portfolio more than particular startups within it. Advice is going to be oriented towards that goal - they'd rather have 99 failures and 1 Facebook over 100 $1M sustainable lifestyle businesses.

"Work as hard as you did in YC" is great and all, but I really don't think it's possible for most folks long-term.

<comment><USER46> YC is not a VC. More importantly, YC is especially known for not blocking founders' wishes or interests. This has been true since forever and is one thing that attracted me as a founder to YC. It may be hard for you to believe, but YC was started by deeply decent people who understand all too well what being a founder is like, and Sam is squarely in that tradition.

I'm not saying you can't be cynical or feel what you feel. I'm saying that cynicism also should have a bar to clear. Painting everything black leaves everything black for everyone. That's intellectual vandalism. It wrecks the discussion in its vicinity, and ultimately wrecks the community, because people who don't like wet black paint all over everything will just leave.

What is the minimal bar that cynicism should clear? Addressing a strong version of what it's critiquing, rather than lazily picking a weak version in order to get straight to sniping. That's the Principle of Charity, and it's basic to intellectual honesty. Why should cynicism get a free pass just because of how it feels? If you had considered that bar before commenting, you couldn't have posted what you did.

I don't at all mean to pick on you personally and I hope I'm not coming across that way. This is a systemic question and I care about its systemic effects on HN. What you posted was no worse than what many people post, and that's the problem.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> "But the list of fake work is long."

I would honestly really love to see a full list of tasks and activities that could be classified as 'fake work'.

<comment><USER48> Generating that list certainly qualifies as 'fake work'.

<comment><USER47> This immediately occurred to me as the reason why such a list is not easily found.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> Momentum is definitely a big thing. When you get a little bit, everything seems to feel a little bit easier. Your morale and confidence peak, it's easier to stay motivated and focused, and the sky even seems bluer. OK, maybe not that last bit, but you know what I mean.

We were in a place like that towards the end of last year. We got invited (finally, after several applications) to the CED Tech Venture Conference, which was an important chance to raise our visibility, meet investors, etc., and I had speaking engagements lined up at All Things Open, Tri-JUG and an NCTA event. In the span of 2 months we had 4 big chances to be "out there" getting our name out, and we had some really cool new stuff ready to demo... life was good.

And then two weeks after All Things Open, I find myself on the back of an ambulance, being rushed to the hospital with a heart attack. Talk about your momentum killers. :-(

After that, things went into something of a tailspin. Obviously there was a period of time when I couldn't have cared less about startups, business, or even technology. I was just happy to be alive, and was focused on bike riding, diet, and cardiac rehab. But all through that, I figured it would be easy enough - eventually - to step back into working on Fogbeam and get things moving again. As it happens, it hasn't been quite so easy.

I mean, don't get me wrong... I'm back. Definitely, absolutely, 100%, back. But I can only say that as of maybe sometime in the past month. But there was a 9 month gap in there where I really just wasn't in the right place mentally to focus on this. It's hard to explain, as I was back to normal physically within a couple of months, but the mental recovery was actually the harder part, and getting back to where I am excited about technology and excited about building a company took a LOT longer than I expected.

I had a little false start back in Feb., when I wrote some code, did some stuff, and thought I was back on the horse, but it didn't last. It's been discouraging to deal with all this, and even more so very exactly _because_ all of this happened when we did have some momentum going. Now I find myself wondering what it's going to take to get that back.

I guess there are a lot of things that can kill your momentum: the "fake work" that sama talks about, dealing with fundraising, dealing with acquisition talks, whatever. But from my personal experience I'll just throw in "health issues".

I'm sure you guys get (or will get) tired of hearing about this from me, and I am _generally_ not the preachy type but I'll reiterate this again: pay attention to your health. No, really, do it. It's super easy to assume you're indestructible and immortal, and to push aside concerns about health. I know, I lived that. And the younger you are, the easier it is.

But trust me, it's not a good idea to blow that stuff off, no matter how young you are. Don't say "I'll wait to get back in shape once we have our exit". I mean, there probably won't be an exit if you're dead; and if there is, you won't exactly benefit from it. And remember, on things like heart disease, the artery damage that leads to heart attacks and the like, can begin really young. Even as young as your teenage years. So no matter how busy you are, or how old you are, NOW is the time to start eating right, lose weight, quit smoking, whatever it is you need to do.

Sorry, I'll step off the soapbox now.

<comment><USER9> I'm genuinely curious, how old were you when you had the heart attack?

<comment><USER49> > I'm genuinely curious, how old were you when you had the heart attack?

I was 41.

<comment><USER9> I turned 37 a few months ago, it's always scary to hear about it happening to people close in age.

<comment><USER49> True, but look at the bright side... you have an opportunity, if you take it seriously, to take the measures that can help prevent you from experiencing what I did. The thing about heart attacks, is that they are very preventable. OK, if you're 65 and have smoked your entire life, and weigh 500 lbs, you may not be able to reduce your odds a _lot_. But even then, you can reduce your risk of a heart attack somewhat. At 37, assuming you're in even halfway decent shape, you can improve your odds quite a lot by doing a few simple things:

1\. stop smoking if you smoke.

2\. lose weight

3\. eat a healthier diet.

4\. improve your lipid profile if it's off (talk to your doctor about this)

5\. lower your blood pressure if it's high (again, talk to your doctor. Also, see: lose weight, and exercise more)

6\. If you're diabetic, manage that. (Talk to doctor, lose weight, exercise more)

7\. Exercise more.

8\. (possibly) take a fish-oil supplement. There is at least some research showing that fish-oil can actually reverse existing atherosclerosis. And while it's not definitive on that point, almost everybody agrees that fish-oil is good for you. Even my cardiologist recommended it, while he was neutral / ambivalent on all of the other dietary supplements I asked him about.

9\. It's even less certain, but consider supplementing COQ10, Aged Garlic Extract, and/or Resveratrol. There are varying levels of evidence to support using each of these. Don't take my word for it though, look up what's out there and judge for yourself. IANAD (Doctor)

10\. Read two books: "Cholesterol Clarity" and "Keto Clarity" both by Jimmy Moore and Eric C. Westman. Consider their advice.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> Is it really the case that out of this startup batch that "25% of the companies are on a trajectory that could lead to a multi-billion dollar company"? I haven't really looked at this batch, but I highly doubt that 25 out of the current batch have that ability, just on common sense and past performance.

</comment><comment><USER51> This is an excellent blog: "Focus on growth and never lose momentum. Momentum cures everything. "

I have one question: What to do if your growth flatlines even if you work super hard? How to approach that problem? (I know that there is no simple solution for this - but what would general approach to solve lose of momentum).

</comment><comment><USER52> "I tell founders to consider how directly a task relates to growing." \- but is it really all about growing?

<comment><USER53> Yes. Next question?

More seriously, if you're taking a company through the investment/VC pseudo- Ponzi pipeline, you have to grow. Otherwise, early investors don't get an exit.

<comment><USER54> OK, lets break that down more though - Imagine this scenario: You are a founder, you go YC, you grow a bit, but end up with a company that is settling down into a lifestyle company, while it still satisfies you personally. The early investors (YC) push for an exit, but they are a minority of the shareholders. Certainly, you are grateful to them, and have learned much. But at the end of the day, the growth and big exit is a goal of a minority, not you personally.

I understand completely why this is a problem for YC. I just don't see it as being such a problem for the founders.

<comment><USER55> Maybe if YC is their /only/ investor? I'm not familiar with how YC's initial investment is structured. But your scenario won't exist for many (close enough to all?) startups who have investors. What likely happened is the startup either:

1) raised their money in a priced round. It's therefore unlikely they have unilateral control of the board.

or

2) didn't do a priced round but went with convertible notes. Those initial investments are now interest-accruing debt on their balance sheet.

In either of those scenarios there's going to be immense pressure to not let the business get comfortable.

<comment><USER54> YC's standard deal (at least according to their FAQ) is for 7% equity. So I think it is quite likely that YC startups do hold the majority interest.

As for other scenarios, I can't really speak to that - I personally have never been with a company that accepted any deal that included loss of control. I'm sure it happens, it just doesn't match my experience.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> "Stay focused on building a product your users love and hitting your growth targets."

How can you grow without a product users love? Say your retention rate is nowhere where it needs to be yet, isn't it counterproductive to work on getting more users when you those users won't stick around?

</comment><comment><USER57> A lot of comments seem to be making a horrible comparison between "relentlessly focusing on building a great product and growing" and working long hours. There is no rule that says you must spend 120 waking hours in the office to be relentlessly focused on building a great product and growing the business. In fact, if anything sama is pointing out that people are wasting time with work that does not focus on building a great product or growing.

A member of a YC batch seems to have only a few obligations. There was occasional office hours which help to keep the batch on track with objectives to reach product or growth excellence. They have social events, which are good for learning and more general. They have a few demo type activities which are, again, around product and grown excellence. The rest of the time they work on... product and growth excellence. Do they have to work on things more than 40 hours a week? No. Is there a time clock where they share their hours? No.

Granted they are often out of their normal environment and very excited so they do work more than 40 hours. But that is a choice not a requirement. There are many examples of founders who bring spouses and children and find time during their batch for having great family experiences and good work/life balance.

The issue seems to be when they get home. They no longer spend 40 hours working on growth and product excellence. They work on marketing themselves. They work on raising more money. They work on PR. They lose the product and grown momentum.

We need to stop turning this into a conversation about how "start up founders must give up work/life balance to succeed". No one is suggesting that. What is being suggested is that you take what you learn in a 3 month period and use it after that three month period. Don't work longer, work smarter.

Edit: If the down voters would care to discuss why they object to this opinion, do feel free.

</comment><comment><USER58> Are there statistical differences in slumping rate between pure-software startups vs domain-specific startups that use software as a tool? Numbers, please. Thanks.

</comment><comment><USER59> don't you think part of it is, startups that are not clearly hotshots that are going to raise a ton of cash quickly end up needing to focus on fundraising, and, as an investor, I would expect significant adverse selection on those startups that didn't land big time backers right away

</comment><comment><USER60> Make them stay for longer. That way the good habits are more likely to build. Have you considered that?

</comment><comment><USER61> typo: "Many YC startups learns these lessons" (s/learns/learn/)

</comment><comment><USER62> So tl; dr: keep working hard.

<comment><USER63> Not hard. Smart. Work on the right things is what the article is all about. You missed the point.

</comment></comment><comment><USER64> Something about "startups fail because they simply don't listen to us, get confused, and stop working" feels wrong coming from the President of YC. It bothers me that there's no institutional or personal responsibility being taken. It also bothers me that the risk the founders took isn't being acknowledged - that all the failures are being placed back on the founders' shoulders. YC selected these founders from thousands in an incredibly selective process. Why is Sama crapping on alumni? Wouldn't you want your president going to bat for you and defending your efforts?

<comment><USER65> _> Why is Sama crapping on alumni?_

I don't think he's doing that at all. He merely observed a negative pattern that many startups tend to fall into by default, and warned people about that pattern. The tone of the post is clearly "it's easy to make this mistake, don't make it", not "if you make this mistake you're an idiot." The latter interpretation is perhaps the least charitable you could have picked.

I do think there is a kernel of truth in your comment. YC tests a lot of assumptions and tries a lot of things. Many of the tests work out, some don't. This means that at some point they've necessarily given founders bad advice that people then went on to execute on. I think that's something worth acknowledging explicitly (e.g. "hey, we thought this was right but it turned out to be wrong; sorry"). But there is a huge gap between that, and what you referred to as "crapping on alumni".

</comment></comment><comment><USER66> I know that Sam knows 100 times what I do about failing startups, and that some probably do fail for this reason. But I think this meme that "your startup probably failed just because you stopped trying hard enough" is awful.

Even Sam says IN THIS ARTICLE that "Also, very small startups can grow by sheer force of will, even with a bad product." Looking at the TechCrunch reviews, I think probably half of these companies will turn out to be pretty bad products in hindsight that could never have gone anywhere.

<comment><USER32> That's why I said:

"instead of relentlessly focusing on building a great product..."

But I think it's probably very difficult to tell a great/bad product from reading a paragraph on TechCrunch.

<comment><USER66> I wouldn't say that any of these are bad based on TechCrunch; I mean more that there were something like 3 products that sell machines that sell food, and there's a chance in 10 years we'll say "there was no way that a food-machine product could have become a large business". And regardless of how hard they all work, I don't think it's possible that there will be 3 different "billion- dollar businesses" here.

<comment><USER67> First I agree with you that I don't get a lot of YC startups, including the food selling machines at their current state. I do think that one of the more inefficient aspects of life is how humans handle food, from producing, transporting, storing to cooking/eating. There are just too much waste in every step of that chains. More depressingly, this is waste that doesn't necessarily go back to support the environment like the salmon leftover from the bears. Improving efficiency in any step in this chain is huge for humankind, and potentially worth a lot of money too. I don't know if the YC food startups have that goal in mind, or they are more going for the "oh this is cool" aspect.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Google drops Pwn2Own sponsorship, posts $1MM Chrome bounty - <AUTHOR> http://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/google-drops-pwn2own-sponsorship-posts-1-mln-chrome-bounty/

<comment><USER2> I suspect we will see a lot of things like this.. if you aren't required to disclose the exploit used, there's very little reason for vendors to continue to participate.</comment>


The future of gaming consoles: a variety of models, prices and levels of power - <AUTHOR> So if it makes sense to have one "more powerful" PS/4 model, why not also have an "even more powerful PS/4" i.e. for those who have the money, why not also offer a super powerful, more expensive but very high end PS4 - something that can provide the power needed for 4K gaming and VR?
Perhaps in future consoles will offer three or more levels of the same machine, all exactly compatible but some more powerful and expensive than others.
Games manufacturers have obsessed about providing lowest possible cost console but perhaps now there can be a range of the same consoles to meet the varying needs and wallets of gamers.
Perhaps at any given time Microsoft and Sony will have three or maybe even four levels of console available. <comment><USER2> It would probably 'NEVER' happen.

PS4 and XBone were outdated even before they were launched, and were widely criticized. But this was necessary is order to reduce the manufacturing cost of the consoles. This is the 8th Generation of consoles, the 7th Gen, PS3 and Xbox360 lasted around 7-8 years. But due to huge advancement in technology the 8th Gen has already become oudated.

Also, we cannot have multiple generation of consoles at the same time because it makes it difficult for the Devs to make the game. It significantly increases the development cost and most of them would refuse to make the games for multiple consoles.

It has also been said, that after the PS Neo or the PS 4.5, there would not be any PS5, since everyone is thinking of moving to the cloud.</comment>


I'm about to give up on AngularJS, I'm going to try React - <AUTHOR> My implementation is pretty vanilla AngularJS with ui-router. All I want is for a user to use forward and back browser buttons to navigate. It doesn't work. I can't find a solution through searching Google. What few blog posts and StackOverflow questions I can find are from 2013 and 2014.
I'm not going to spend a week figuring out how all the internals work so I can roll my own solution.
If going to spend a week on something, it will be working with React. And, I'll see where that goes. <comment><USER2> > My implementation is pretty vanilla AngularJS with ui-router. All I want is > for a user to use forward and back browser buttons to navigate

This really shouldn't be hard to get working. Try downloading a sample/example project that has routing set up already then strip it down to the bare minimum. Throwing a whole framework away because you're maybe missing a line of code somewhere isn't going to set a good trend.

<comment><AUTHOR> After several hours I figured it out. My biggest problem was that I had the same sentiment as your comment in "because you're maybe missing a line of code." I kept blaming myself when it was a bug in a popular module one of only a handful I'm using.

<comment><USER2> Just remember you're in good company! I find a lot of coding involves you trying to do something, getting an error, you look up the error, you try the solution you find, you get a new error and so on. Many people will give up after a few hurdles.

I tried to port an Angular 1 to Angular 2 recently and fixing issues to do with just getting the JavaScript modules/files to load drove me up the wall. I was close to giving up but after working through several layers of issues it eventually worked. Sounds like it was an similar experience to you...there's so many permutations of JavaScript stacks you can use that isolating the issue is like finding a needle in a haystack sometimes. What I mean is that sometimes all you can do it be persistent and realise that switching to a new framework could just introduce lots of new issues.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Though I enjoy React, React (by itself) isn't a full MVC framework like Angular.

Before you throw out everything, try this: [https://docs.angularjs.org/guide/$location](https://docs.angularjs.org/guide/$location)

<comment><AUTHOR> This is actually a helpful comment.

I've been working through $location and state change events. I've read and worked through every blog post and stack exchange question from the first three pages of the "angularjs $location" Google search results for the last 36 hours.

The browser address bar was flickering so I was wondering why that happened. It wasn't my code but I found the culprit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> React is a very nice UI view rendering lib, but that's pretty much all it does. Which isn't a bad thing at all, just something to bare in mind coming from Angular.

jsx is incredibly straightforward to read/write, and the actual time it takes to build anything is trivial, but if you drop a lot of es6 on it babel is going to output some moderately horrifying code when you dig into it.

Get your head around the component lifecycle stuff early and save yourself some O(n) heartache down the line.

</comment><comment><USER5> If you are going to spend a week in angular for routing you will spend a month in react cause react is a view rendering lib. Just read the docs and for for [http://angular.io](http://angular.io) (angular2) they have a hands on example

</comment><comment><USER6> Did you try reading the ui-router docs?

[https://github.com/angular-ui/ui- router/blob/master/README.m...](https://github.com/angular-ui/ui- router/blob/master/README.md#nested-states--views)

The "Nested States & Views" section of the README links to a full working demo on Plunker that does exactly what you want:

[http://plnkr.co/edit/u18KQc?p=preview](http://plnkr.co/edit/u18KQc?p=preview)

</comment><comment><USER7> If all you really need is a router, you should probably just use a router:

[https://github.com/AmpersandJS/ampersand- router](https://github.com/AmpersandJS/ampersand-router)

I've personally used this router with in a React SPA, though you can use it with pretty much anything including something simple like jQuery or Knockout. If you don't want to use a module loader, then grabbing the original Backbone router is probably your best bet.

</comment><comment><USER8> Good luck in React, there is a good learning material called "ReactJS Convention Book - ReactJS For Dummies: Why & How to Learn React Redux, the Right Way." \- and it's 100% online at [https://reactjs.co/](https://reactjs.co/)

</comment><comment><USER9> Do it! React is way better.

<comment><USER10> ?

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Vuejs is what you really want

</comment><comment><USER12> I personally recommend a vanilla front-end. Contact me for details.

^_^</comment>


Writer Jack London: "You Must Deliver Marketable Goods" - <AUTHOR> http://www.lettersofnote.com/2012/04/you-must-deliver-marketable-goods.html

<comment><AUTHOR> Perhaps it is too much of a stretch for me to submit this here, but I was wondering if anyone had something similar from someone who was more experienced in coding and offered any advice like that?

<comment><USER2> <http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Steve_Jobs></comment></comment>


DIY Arduino Water Meter - <AUTHOR> http://labs.teague.com/?p=722 <comment><USER2> I wonder if there's a similar, cheap way to measure air quality? I live in Houston, where air quality is highly dependent on the movement of air with the tides. When the ocean air mass moves ashore, air quality improves, and when air is pulled from the land over the ocean, air quality tends to decrease. I'd like to build a ventilation system that maximizes air intake when the air quality is good. I wouldn't have to measure all pollutants. One or two would probably suffice. (NOX)?

<comment><USER3> You can detect particulate matter pretty easily: [http://www.sparkfun.com/commerce/product_info.php?products_i...](http://www.sparkfun.com/commerce/product_info.php?products_id=9689)

I have also seen "odor sensors" on air filters. But your best bet is probably to suck air into your house through a good filter, like: <http://www.air-n- water.com/product/healthproplus.html> (which has a duct kit so you can put your intake outside). Then the air you are breathing is always clean.

<comment><USER2> This only helps with particulates down to a certain size. Ozone and Nitrous Oxide have been implicated in increased mortality from heart disease.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Good article; I want to try this, and I would like to do it for the whole house as well.

(To avoid your readers reaching for the readability button, consider using something other than tiny white letters on light grey background.)

<comment><USER5> I thought about this as well but I was thinking about tapping into the mainline to the house as well. Any ideas about the feasibility of measuring at that point? (Would be helpful for catching slow leaks, garden applications etc.)</comment></comment>


Hundreds of Chinese iPhone users have had their accounts compromised - <AUTHOR> https://technode.com/2018/10/11/china-apple-id-compromised/ <comment><USER2> TL;DR

Hundreds of Chinese iPhone users are believed to have had their Apple IDs compromised · TechNode Over 700 Chinese iPhone users have inexplicably had money deducted from their Apple ID-bound payment channels, with the highest being RMB 10,000, according to local media.

Alibaba-owned Alipay, whose users were also affected, said that some Apple IDs were stolen, resulting in financial losses.

The company reached out to Apple to find out the reasons for the theft, with Apple responding saying that it is addressing the situation.

Some users received Alipay notifications informing them that purchases had been made in the App Store and Apple Music.

Other payment channels that can be bound to an Apple ID include WeChat Pay, debit card, and credit card.

Records show that some users' Apple IDs were used to log into devices other than their own to make purchases.

Some users who have attempted to apply for refunds through Apple have been told that reversing the purchases is not possible, even after one user requested assistance from the Shanghai Consumer Protection Committee.

Used smmry.com for this.</comment>


Chelsea Manning may face solitary confinement - <AUTHOR> http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/aug/12/chelsea-manning-solitary-confinement-toothpaste-army

<comment><USER2> it's a good reminder how low the US government has sunken and how little dignity it's protagonist seem to have and seem to recognize</comment>


Ask HN: How does your (startup) office look like? - <AUTHOR>

Luckilly we are 3 in our startup and the 4th partner is about to join us full-time. In our country rent contracts are for at least 2 years so we are looking for offices which are suitable for 8-12 people. So I was wondering how do your offices look like (size, space, layouts, desks). If you have some pictures to share they would be more than an inspiration to us. Of course ideas are more than welcome also. <comment><USER2> We (<http://gameplanapp.com>) work from a spare room in @andycroll's apartment. It's very functional, we do pair programming so it's great for focus, and we launched our MVP in 3 months so I guess it's been going great so far.

P.S. Shameless plug - you can read more about us at NakedStartup <http://nakedstartup.com>

<comment><USER3> Very cool app. I just spent all last week writing something just like this in Django for a game my friends made up. (I'm not a competitor, it was just for fun). We have organized tournaments a few times a year and are looking to grow our sport in the next year. I like your site since it scratches an itch I had so here is some totally unsolicited feedback: 1) I would suggest you allow people to add custom sports, 2) change fixtures to "Events" or "Matches," being from the US I had no idea what a "fixture" is, 3) please create a way to delete my account, 4) please create a way to delete my organization since now my own sports site is going to be competing with this custom public site once it gets crawled, 5) create a way to make the "public" site hidden until it is ready, or even has teams, data to display, and 6) create a way to do automatic team picking from a pool of players like a "draft". Great start, if you have any additional questions, hit me up at the email in my profile.

Just out of curiosity, do you plan on on having an ad supported freemium model or will this be solely subscription based?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> My startup office looks exactly like my living room for some strange reason. Part of it also looks exactly like the spare bedroom in my apartment. And the "break room" looks just like my kitchen. Weird, huh?

All joking aside, my spare bedroom doubles as my office/lab/library, but I do most of my work in the living room. Right now there's a gaming chair sitting in the middle of the floor, in front of the TV, and there are stacks of books off the the left, another stack of books on my right, a big pile of magazines behind that stack of books, and behind me is the dinner table, which is doubling as a repository for more books, magazines. notebooks, scraps of paper, etc. On the walls around me are a total five big whiteboards, and in the corner is one of those cheap metal & fiberboard tables, with a pile of PC hardware (some in use, some waiting to be used, and some waiting to be thrown out) on it. In the other corner is a big pile of old Sun boxes, most of which I should probably just pitch in the bin, since I'm probably never going to use them at this point. Cloud Computing, ya know? Slicehost / Linode / EC2 have kinda removed my need to keep a lot of physical hardware around.

Oh, and there are two mountain bikes and a BMX bike in another corner of the room, taking up space. That's my world these days.... computers, books, magazines and bicycles. And notebooks, lots of notebooks... I still like to brainstorm on paper a lot of times. One of those artist style notebooks (blank/unlined paper), a drafting pencil and a box of colored pencils and I'm set.

</comment><comment><USER5> This is where Fanvibe first started, in my living room: <http://flickr.com/gp/kinetic/Y2ceC3>

Check out the photos! our first purchase was a foosball table ;) We also had one of our interns working with us in the "office"

We since moved off to Dogpatch Labs in San Francisco, which became a bit too distracting to code in everyday, so I usually just work from a small home office that has three walls of windows =)

</comment><comment><USER6> Former mortgage company office in down-on-luck building with 50% occupancy. Bargained landlord down to $700/mo. Already network-wired because of all those mortgage officer desks. Manager's office turned into conf room, nice perk.

Previous occupants split in the middle of the night, leaving mortgage records stuffed in filing cabinets(possible scammers?) and furniture! All ours for free. Not the records; those we shredded.

</comment><comment><USER7> Summer: The dining room table in a condo provided by my summer job boss. Otherwise, dorm room.</comment>


Denmark Levies world's first fat tax - <AUTHOR> http://finance.ninemsn.com.au/newsbusiness/8354522/denmark-levies-worlds-first-fat-tax

<comment><USER2> May be it's the article's particular spin, but the tax doesn't sound very well thought out. This is just a form of moral legislation similar to prohibition of alcohol and enforcement of religious standards (i.e., blue laws). The article also brings up the fact that this tax will hurt Danish companies because exports will be less exposed to this tax than local products.

</comment><comment><USER3> I remember when Canada raised their taxes on goods; every weekend there were caravans of Canadians flowing into Duluth to shop at the Sam's Club.

edit - This was around 1990. Yeah, I'm old.

</comment><comment><USER4> Is anyone surprised here? Denmark has the highest taxes in the world. It's just one more thing the government wants to control.

<comment><USER5> Taxes helps the poor at the cost of the rich. Good deal if you ask me

<comment><USER6> [http://ida.dk/english/comeworkandliveindenmark/livingindenma...](http://ida.dk/english/comeworkandliveindenmark/livingindenmark/Sider/livingindenmark.aspx)

Yeah it does seem like a good deal. If the government can indeed make good on these services, I think that is good.

<comment><USER4> "If you do not have a tax card, the employer must withhold 60% of your salary for taxes without allowances."

Sounds great. Where can I sign up!</comment></comment></comment></comment>


What Linux Ultrabook do you suggest? - <AUTHOR> I am considering the Dell XPS 13" DE or a Suped Up Lenovo IdeaPad 700 for my devel machine.
My must haves are... 250+ SDD 8 GB Ram Intel i7
What do you suggest? <comment><USER2> This discussion is 7 months old but has some useful comments [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11353245](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11353245)

<comment><AUTHOR> 7 months is a long time in tech. Ubuntu 16.04 was't around then either. Im Interested in some recent pro and cons

<comment><USER3> This is true[1], but especially for running Linux, I think this attitude might be shooting yourself in the foot. What I mean by that is, hardware support on Linux lags behind the closed source OS options by the very nature of Linux being open source and the developers needing access to the hardware to make anything work. Intel themselves try to get ahead of the curve, but even they are not perfect and when it comes to the trickier aspects such as power management, it often takes a few months of having the hardware in-the-wild to get things really sorted. And that's not to mention the fact that distros rarely run a bleeding edge kernel.

[1] Intel CPUs have not changed very much, instructions-per-clock wise, over the past 3 or 4 generations. You're looking at 5-10% _at most_ for any single generation. Their _GPUs_ have drastically improved, and the power efficiencies have improved, but since you're running Linux... well sadly, we don't tend to get the same benefits closed source peoples do in those two respects. As for SSDs, buy something with a HDD and install the SSD yourself. It's cheaper, and you'll get a far better SSD than you would when you let the OEM choose what to install.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you. I haven't thought of looking at a HDD model and buying an SSD.

I am going to look into that right now.

<comment><USER3> Sure. The one area where this advice begins to break down, however, is with M.2 PCIe SSDs. I personally don't keep up with laptops, so unfortunately I can't offer any specific recommendations, but if you can find an otherwise solid laptop with an M.2 slot that's the way to go. They're about 2-3x faster than SATA-based SSDs. It's not the same order-of-magnitude jump in speed a SSD offers over a HDD, so I wouldn't necessarily call it a make-or-break feature, but it's something to keep in mind (for that, you'll definitely need the latest-generation "Skylake" platform)

Also, to save yourself some time researching SSDs: [http://www.anandtech.com/show/9799/best- ssds](http://www.anandtech.com/show/9799/best-ssds)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I was doing the same search some time ago and the final contenders were:

Lenovo t460 (or t460p) Asus UX305A Dell XPS 13 Dev Edition

However I ended up not buying any of those.

I had bought a toshiba i3 with 8 gb of ram 2 years ago for £300 and I didn't felt like any of those laptops would give an improvement worth the price.

Laptopts are a little bit stuck it seems. I sincerely tried to buy one but just couldn't justify... I am running Ubuntu 16.04 perfectly, everything just works.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes. I too feel like they are over priced and stuck in place where the manufactures don't know what sell or what price to sell them as. Im going to search for Laptops with an HDD and see what I find. Im looking at Dell and Lenovo right now. But I am leaning towards Dell cause of the problems with Lenovo and SSDs and BOIS with RAID options.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> XPS 13.

That said, I haven't had much luck getting the usb-c dock working 100% correctly with Ubuntu 16.04. Going from laptop to attached to a separate monitor and peripherals works, but workstation to laptop more often than not will leave me with the laptop still 'seeing' the external monitor and treating the laptop monitor as the secondary display.

</comment><comment><USER6> Running Arch on a Dell XPS 9350. Not DE, because I dual boot for Windows specific apps I use.

Overall, great laptop. I have the QHD+ screen which is awesome, but did require a bit of fine tuning to get the DPI where I want it.

Any specific questions?

</comment><comment><USER7> There is this little company in the south of Italy that makes great computers: www.santech.eu

Not sure how they handle warranties in US but the whole Europe should be cover.

</comment><comment><USER8> I don't know if it counts as an ultrabook, but I'm enjoying my System76 laptop. There are a few different models, depending on what size you want.

<comment><AUTHOR> which System 76 laptop do you own? I was considering getting one, but Im concerned about the service since I live in Northern Ontario Canada

<comment><USER8> I have the 14" Lemur: [https://system76.com/laptops/lemur](https://system76.com/laptops/lemur) . What are you concerned about?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thank you all for your comments. I'M still undecided. It looks like a tie between Dell and Lenovo. Hmmm. Ill wait till Black Friday

<comment><USER9> Before black Friday go to a store and touch the keyboards. If you can write something that looks like real work(TM), do it.

You spend a lot of time using the keyboard and build some muscle memory about how far apart the keys are and how much force you have to apply.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I got a xps 13 in 2012 and it is happy with 16.04 - my only reason to upgrade would be for longer battery life, less fan noise.

</comment><comment><USER11> I was delighted with my ASUS UX305UA for 5 months, now it's been in and out of repair for 1 month :(

<comment><USER12> I've had such bad experience with Asus that 4 years ago I decided to never ever purchase another one again. I guess things haven't changed

<comment><USER13> Happy user of ux32vd here for 3-4 years. i7, upgraded ram to 10Gb. Disk is slower than it could be, short batery life ~3h. All in all I would buy it again.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> FWIW, I really like my Thinkpad X1.

</comment><comment><USER15> I've heard the Dell XPS is the best if you're looking to run Linux.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah. I have looked at this as an option. thanks

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> just about any lenovo thinkpad might work fine</comment>


Older Americans are 47 times richer than young - <AUTHOR> http://money.cnn.com/2011/11/07/news/economy/wealth_gap_age/

<comment><USER2> You can't help but be bitter about this.

We (the young) didn't do anything, or ask for anything. But thanks to the speculative greed of previous generations, we're saddled with (even post- crash) unaffordable housing prices that favor the already-wealthy. Buying a home on a middle class working income is nigh impossible, unlike in their generation. So far from joining the speculators, we can't even buy a roof over our own heads in most places, especially places with jobs.

Our governmental services are collapsing in a large part due to the money we're pouring into pensions - pensions that previous generations voted to give themselves. Ones _far_ more generous than anything history has ever _seen_. Everything can go, including our education system, but the pension is sacrosanct. Touch it and a legion of Baby Boomers will have you for lunch.

We're the generation of suckers. We (and probably our children, too) are the ones who will be paying for the ludicrous excesses of the Boomers, while getting nothing ourselves. Defined benefit pensions? Hah! Traditionally people pay into their future. We are stuck paying our past.

Bitter? Me? How could you tell?

<comment><USER3> They were also conscripted into wars with dizzying American casualties, had parents and siblings who died of polio, lived under continuous threat of nuclear annihilation, and had to call someone up on the phone to place a stock market order. Oh, and that whole internet thing.

Suggest looking forward, not back. What do we do next?

<comment><USER2> This is about looking forward. We're in dire economic straits, our funding for something as basic and fundamental s our children's educations are being threatened. Public libraries are closing across the country. Research funding is reaching dreadfully low levels - especially in comparison to countries that we now find ourselves competing with.

And on top of that, people are getting poorer. Even folks "protected" by traditionally pro-labour unions are being thrown under the bus to protect the pensions of its older members. The treatment of young union members by the organization that supposedly protects their rights is laughable if it weren't so damned unjust.

So yes, let's look forward. We face a desperate economic situation, in which we must all make deep cuts and great sacrifices if this country is to have a competitive future. Our education system has certainly paid the price. Our arts and culture, too. Taxes are rising, but yet the greatest liability we have is still pension funding.

The one quarter where no sacrifices, no compromises must be made. Toss the band program. Screw math textbooks. Fuck scientific research. The pension is holy! It must not be touched! So yes, we _are_ looking at the future, and these people will doom it.

Even if we're not playing the blame game - there is not much we can do productively to save ourselves unless pension compromise can be brought to the table. Unfunded pension liabilities are _the_ threat to our economic existence - the over-promised benefits are _really_ going to gut us. Even if we continued along this path of "everything must go in the name of funding pension liabilities", it's _still_ not enough. Without cuts to pensions we're screwed no matter what.

<comment><USER3> I like your comments so much that I specifically follow them, but this comment would be equally as informative if you kept only the last graf.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Our own cperciva wrote an interesting take on wealth inequality:

[http://www.daemonology.net/blog/2011-01-10-inequality-in- equ...](http://www.daemonology.net/blog/2011-01-10-inequality-in- equalland.html)

The elderly should have significantly more accumulated wealth than the young, because they've had longer to save. How much more, I couldn't say. But I'm always skeptical of attempts to tug at my heartstrings by pointing out that "those people" have more wealth than "these people" without some sort of systemic model to back up the complaint and explain what the proper level of inequality should be.

<comment><USER5> This article (or one like it) needs to see wide circulation as a counterpoint to the posted article.

All things being equal and assuming some sort of positive savings rate and return on investment older people will _always_ be richer than younger people.

What's more when your denominator is so small (old / young) the increasing X% just becomes silly. If their average wealth decreases $600 (which is the projected impact of rising gas prices next year, I believe) the elderly will then be 56X as wealthy.

Personally, the fact that the average not-old person is swimming in consumer debt, has a 0% savings rate, and that by their own choosing is the real story and one that no one seems willing to touch.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> In my parents generation, you made an investment and chances are it would go well. Since I left college, you made an investment and chances are it wouldn't go well.

By the time my parents were my age, they were married and had bought their first house in connecticut thanks to a loan from my dad's employer.

My parents bought property in connecticut, singapore, london, indonesia and did pretty well with that over the years. They rented out places and built a pretty decent nest egg. Property prices didn't go down between the times they bought and sold property.

It's a different world now. The best way to build wealth is to play both sides of the fence so you make money in both creation and destruction. For me, I'm betting that I can create software of value to enough people that I can build wealth. I've hedged my bets by getting some % of the current company I work for, but if I stay at this salary for the long haul, I will never have financial security.

It's a little bleak. I pity the people who swallowed the blue pill and work for some large corp. Some will get into the top tier and be phenomenally wealthy. The rest, I'm not so sure.

</comment><comment><USER7> There might be something to do with pension plans as well; the current cohort of retirees got quite generous (by both historical and current standards) defined-benefit pensions.

<comment><USER8> Luckily corporations have shifted those funds to fat bonuses and golden parachutes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Remember this when they elderly fight tooth & nail against any cuts to their precious welfare programs...

The average medicare recipient has only paid ~$75K in taxes but will extract >$500K in services.

The 'Greatest Generation' is bankrupting this country.

<comment><USER10> I get a different read from the story. The Greatest Generation has not spent themselves into debt with hundred dollar a month smart phone bills, five hundred a month auto leases, another fifty for high speed internet, a thousand dollars to coffee shop across a year, and so on and so on.

My parents are from this generation, they saved. I am trying to be the same way but it is very difficult. There are so many many temptations out there and we are heavily marketed too on every front.

Look, we have people lining up at night to buy iPhones, the latest video game, or to see a movie. That generation remembered people lining up for food, the draft, and other such true necessities of life then.

The "ME" generation is bankrupting America by wanting the rewards of a successful life without actually having to work for it. Instant gratification doesn't work, but it sure doesn't stop people running for office who promise it.

<comment><USER2> I think there's a bit of rose-tinted glasses going on here, and you're really painting a straw man.

Not all of us buy expensive smartphones, have $500 car loans, thousand-dollar coffee shop bills, etc etc.

Similarly, not all of your beloved, vaunted Boomers were penny-pinching misers who saved all they got and avoided the drive-in, movies, and bars.

My impression (never having lived it 60s and 70s, of course) is that people then we just as excessive as we are now, or at least the marginal difference can't explain away the giant gap in wealth.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'm seeing more of these intergenerational conflict articles coming to the surface now. I'm not surprised it took so log for it to happen. I'm surprised that baby boomers are allowing it to happen at all.

I can't imagine baby boomers wanting to watch network news or read mainstream websites that bring light to these inequalities. It's eyeballs and wallets that dictate content, and it's the boomers who have both.</comment>


Changes Between C++17 and C++20 - <AUTHOR> http://www.open-std.org/jtc1/sc22/wg21/docs/papers/2020/p2131r0.html <comment><USER2> At the bottom of the page, I had to chuckle at:

Assorted snippets demonstrating C++20

        int main() {}

<comment><USER3> There is no return statement, although function is marked as `int`

<comment><USER4> C and C++ explicitly permit this

<comment><USER3> I remember problems compiling this in older C++, circa 2000. Maybe was just a compiler's "opinion"...

<comment><USER4> Probably just a buggy implementation. The C _and_ C++ standards are explicit that `main` return an int and only an int. _Never_ void. This has _always_ been the case. However, the `main` function is the only function where the return statement _can_ be omitted. If it is omitted, it's an implicit `return 0`.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Can someone explain the purpose of "Three-way comparison ("spaceship") and defaulted comparisons"

>>>The value of the expression a <=> b describes which one of a < b, a == b, and a > b is true.

A key part of this feature is that classes that provide this operator can have all of the six traditional, binary relational operators defined implicitly.

<comment><USER6> The primary purpose of this is reducing boilerplate code. For supporting comparisons one currently has to implement a large set if functions. One for each of <, >, <=, =>, != and ==. However many times the implementation of those 6 functions is similar. Thus lots of code to write.

With operator<=> one can implement a single function and the compiler becomes the smart one. When calling o1 < o2 or calling o1 >= o2 the compiler will do a call to the single operator<=> and interpret the return value accordingly.

Notably less repitive typing for the type provider.

<comment><USER7> What if you want to do an equality operation, but the greater than or less than operators require lots of computation? If an object only defines the space ship operator, then isn't it very likely that you will get a lot of extra computation when all you care baout if the two objects are or aren't equal to each other?

<comment><USER8> I believe programmers are still free to define specific operators in lieu of the compiler-derived ones for such cases.

I found a blog post which raised similar concerns [0], and P1185 [1] proposes some solutions. I don't know whether they made it into the standard, though.

[0]: [https://foonathan.net/2018/10/spaceship- proposals/](https://foonathan.net/2018/10/spaceship-proposals/)

[1]: [http://www.open- std.org/jtc1/sc22/wg21/docs/papers/2019/p118...](http://www.open- std.org/jtc1/sc22/wg21/docs/papers/2019/p1185r1.html)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Random feedback weights support learning in deep neural networks - <AUTHOR> http://arxiv.org/abs/1411.0247 <comment><USER2> This reminds me of something that came up in Andrew Ng's online ML class. He said that it is important to check the correctness of your gradient calculation in backprop (by comparing it to a finite difference of the loss) because if you have a bug there, your algorithm might more or less work anyway, making it hard to tell that there was a bug. Apparently you can still get sensible output even with an incorrect gradient.

</comment><comment><USER3> On reading this, my first question is about the properties of the "random" feedback matrix. They illustrate what is happening using a tiny 1-width machine and a "random" matrix of "1". It seems like some analysis needs to be done on what kind of "random" is most appropriate to replace the gradient update for larger machines. There could be something really interesting going on such that you could generate some optimal non-random B according to whatever the network topology is.

</comment><comment><USER4> The implications of this are huge, it should drastically reduce processing time for neural nets. I wonder if given this if networks could be updated asynchronously/continuously.

<comment><USER5> I don't really understand how it would reduce processing time, could you elaborate?

The main implications seem to be for neuroscience, as far as I can tell. Backprop is considered biologically implausible because it requires either bidirectional communication over synapses (which doesn't happen) or weight sharing between neurons. But this allows the forward and backward connections to be decoupled (i.e. they are different synapses).

This is really interesting stuff, my first reaction was "why does this even work?" I think I still don't really fully understand what's going on.

<comment><USER6> > Backprop is considered biologically implausible

This is not true. See Neural Back propagation [1]. There are known mechanisms for backwards feedback between neural connections, for example Spike Timing Dependent Plasticity - where neural inputs that are well correlated in time and potential to output firings are strengthened over time. These phenomena are vital to learning and neural development.

[1] [http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neural_backpropagation](http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neural_backpropagation)

<comment><USER7> Yes but that's not really anything like the backpropagation algorithm in artificial neural networks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> P = NP in the presence of a random oracle.

<comment><USER9> keyword: oracle

<comment><USER10> random oracle - the random thing is what throws me...</comment></comment></comment>